Fly Away Home (a.k.a. Flying Wild and Father Goose) is a 1996 family drama film directed by Carroll Ballard. The film stars Anna Paquin, Jeff Daniels, and Dana Delany. Fly Away Home was released on September 13, 1996, by Columbia Pictures.
Fly Away Home dramatizes the actual experiences of Bill Lishman who, in 1986, started training Canada geese to follow his ultralight aircraft, and succeeded in leading their migration in 1993 through his program "Operation Migration". The film is also based on the experience of Dr. William J. L. Sladen, a British-born zoologist and adventurer, who aided Lishman with the migration.
After surviving a car accident in which her mother Aliane dies, 13-year-old Amy Alden is brought from New Zealand to Ontario, Canada, by her estranged father Thomas Alden, a sculptor and inventor, to live with him and his girlfriend Susan.
When a construction crew destroys a small wilderness area near the Alden home, Amy finds an abandoned nest of 16 goose eggs. Without Thomas, Susan, or her uncle David knowing, she takes the eggs and keeps them in a dresser in her father's old barn to incubate. When the eggs hatch, she is allowed to keep the goslings as pets. Thomas asks for help from local Animal Regulation officer Glen Seifert on how to care for the geese. Seifert comes over to the Alden house and explains that the geese have imprinted on Amy as their mother. He explains that geese learn everything from their parents including migratory routes, but also warns Thomas that a private ordinance dictates that all domestic geese must have their wings pinioned (clipped) to render them flightless. He promptly tries to demonstrate the process with one of the goslings, which upsets Amy. Thomas throws Seifert off his property, only for Seifert to threaten the Aldens that if the birds start flying, he will have to confiscate them.
Thomas decides to use an ultralight aircraft he had been constructing to teach the birds to fly and show them their migratory routes but quickly realizes the birds will only follow Amy. Aided by his friend Barry, Thomas teaches Amy how to fly an ultralight aircraft of her own. David knows someone running a bird sanctuary in North Carolina and arranges for the geese to go to the sanctuary. The birds have to arrive before November 1, or the sanctuary will be torn down by developers who plan to turn it into a coastal housing development.
Amy and Thomas practice flying the aircraft, but Igor, the weakest of the geese, who has a limp, accidentally hits the front of Amy's aircraft and lands in an isolated forest. While the group goes off to search for the bird, Glen Seifert returns to the Alden farm and confiscates the other geese. The next day, the Aldens free the geese, and Amy leads them on their migration to North Carolina.
Making an emergency landing at Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station in western New York on the south shore of Lake Ontario, Amy and Thomas almost get arrested. They become national news, with residents cheering them on.
Thomas and Amy meet an old woman with a vendetta against goose shooting, and she invites them to stay the night at her house. That night Amy asks Thomas why he seldom visited her and her mother. From her mother, she knows that her parents were artists, who tend to be selfish, and that her mother left for both of their sakes. Thomas tells her that he was afraid and angry at himself for letting them leave, so he spent the next ten years buried in his work. He apologizes to Amy.
Thirty miles before reaching the bird sanctuary, Thomas's aircraft suffers a structural failure and crashes in a cornfield; having suffered a dislocated shoulder he tells Amy to finish the journey by herself. Thomas hitchhikes to the bird sanctuary. While waiting for the geese, Thomas, Susan, David, Barry, and many animal enthusiasts stand up to developers who are waiting to start the excavation of the site.
Amy eventually appears with the geese, much to the joy of the townspeople and Amy's family, and to the dismay of the developers. The townspeople and the Aldens celebrate their victory. During the end credits, a note reveals that all 16 geese - including Igor - returned to the Aldens' farm on their own in the following spring.
Filmed on a modest budget, Fly Away Home returned $25 million in the U.S. box office and $31 million internationally.
Audiences enjoyed the evocative, uplifting family-oriented film, which also received acclaim from critics. Roger Ebert noted: "There are individual shots here almost worth the price of admission...[including] a stunning shot in which the towers of Baltimore materialize from the mist, and office workers see the little girl and her geese flying past their windows."[9] Janet Maslin from The New York Times was similarly effusive, "Mr. Ballard turns a potentially treacly children's film into an exhilarating 90's fable."[10] Gene Shalit on the Today Show called the film "a must-see movie."
30 сен 2024
